Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating.(Book Review)

Women in Judaism, January, 2003 by Sassen, Robyn

Naomi Graetz. Silence Is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating. Northvale, NJ and Jerusalem : Jason Aronson, 1998. 272 pp. Glossary, appendices, bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-7657-6013-4.

A perception has been held and nurtured that domestic violence in the Jewish family is something of a contradiction in terms. The concept of Shalom Bayit and the ways in which Jewish home life is structured around a calendar that lends itself to family togetherness and sharing seems to support this view. In reality, however, the perception that a level of aberrant behaviour is completely absent is impossible. For one thing, it uniformly describes a set of people as impervious to the realities that constitute being human; put another way, like any other social...

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